Night All Night : The Line of Best Fit meets Diagrams

It’s bitterly cold on the morning we speed up to Clapham to meet Diagrams main man Sam Genders. A fine layer of frost coats the English countryside blurring past the train window as we approach London’s suburbs. It seems a fitting visual accompaniment to Diagram’s debut album Black Light, whose crisp production and electronics put Genders’ familiar tones in a different setting.

It’s been a while since we heard from the affable Genders – his last record with Tunngwas Good Arrows in 2007, and his other project The Accidental wrapped up their few shows in 2009. That isn’t to say he turned his back on music however – spending time writing and co-writing for others, including fellow Matlock boy Ben Otwell of Gomez, whom he reveals he grew up two doors away from. While a romantic might imagine the two returning to their childhood homes to collaborate, the pair do occasionally return to Matlock to play shows at the local pub. It was a process and relationship Genders clearly relished; “I love the fact that it isn’t mine – that I don’t have to worry about it, but can just let someone else do what they like with it. I’d love to do more of it”

While Genders professes his love of collaborations, Diagrams is slightly different. Stepping away from this familiar songwriting method was a conscious effort to put himself out of his element; “I wanted to have one record in my life that was my thing alone. In that sense I suppose it is a solo record. That said, there are loads of others involved, playing and producing, making me a bit like a ‘curator’ of these ideas. Ultimately though, I didn’t have to check with anyone else to see what they thought, so there was a lot of playing with lots of different idea s- a case of trying things out.”

From the outset of the project, Genders wanted to work with producers who could bring their own ideas to the table – working with Micachu and Subliminal Kid (Fever Ray). While both were fantastic, Genders says, practicalities such as touring (Micachu) and location (Subliminal Kid lives in Sweden) made working together logistically difficult. When he went in to the studio with Mark Bryden however, something clicked. “We went in and did tracking for ‘Night all Night’ and it worked really well. His way of recording is really clean and precise and took things in a different direction.”

While the beats are crisp and light, there is still an underlying warmth to Black Light, partly as a result of the way it was recorded, and partly because of a change in the tone of Genders writing. By his own admission the material he had written in the past was much darker and full of doubt, whereas Diagrams finds him looking at life’s possibilities. Genders puts this down, in no small part, to time he spent working as a teaching assistant in his local school, which started in a quiet touring time for Tunng. “Some people could breeze it, no doubt, but as someone who wasn’t very confident it was like a trial by fire. It sounds cliched but I really learnt a lot from it – it was really a quite dramatic experience. You can’t do it if you don’t have confidence. ” But did they make him sing in assembly I ask? “Well,” he replies with a grin, “They didn’t make me, but I did a few. One of the teachers actually played a class a Tunng song and asked them what they thought it was about – it was surprising how insightful they were.”

The positivity and confidence that came as a result of that experience undoubtedly fed into the way Black Light was made, Genders has no doubt. “’Antelope’ was the first song I wrote for the record and it was pretty ‘up’, so much so that at the time I wasn’t sure about it and it felt like a big departure. Now I wouldn’t think twice about it. I think there is a fine line between being positive and lying – sometimes things really are bad or you are having a bad day. I’m not interested in ‘positive thinking’, I’m interested in people saying how things really are.”

The other theme running throughout the record is that of maths and science – references to geometry, physics and maths punctuate the record. Its something Genders has always included, but having the freedom to call the shots has, he concedes, possibly meant more have been included. “I was the kid that stayed up late listening , reading and talking about science and how the world worked, and I suppose I’ve just continued on that way. I’m fascinated by science, nature and psychology and how they affect things.”

It is clear that the bold decision to step away from things for a while has done Genders the power of good. Black Light bristles with positivity and sees doubt being replaced by possibility and wonder, an artist clearly relishing the opportunity to experiment outside of his comfort zone but still managing to retain the warmth and accessibility of his earlier works.

Black Light is available now through Full Time Hobby. Diagrams head on tour across Europe in March.

March
6 – Paradiso, Amsterdam
7 – AB, Brussels
8 – La Fleche D’Or, Paris
9 – Karlstorbahnhof, Heidleberg
10 – Magnet, Berlin
11 – Kampnagel, Hamburg
14 – The Cooler, Bristol
15 – Ruby Lounge, Manchester
16 – Static Gallery, Liverpool
17 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
18 – King Tuts, Glasgow